Received ARC.
Review on Metapsychology Online ( )

This is a story that I think would work much better on screen than it does on the page. The setting - inside of a puppet theatre in Russia - would make for a great movie set. The story lacked for me a little bit because it was a little difficult for me to figure out what was going on - maybe it was the translation from Russian. The protagonist is a gay teen - or maybe an adolescent - I couldn't really tell how old he was supposed to be. He has a crush on an older boy who is an actor at the puppet theatre. The older boy is moving to Amsterdam because Russia is really antagonistic toward gay people. These characters could have been 12 and 19, respectively, or 14 and 22. I have no idea. And nothing gay actually happens in the book, except for some homophobia, so that's a bit of a letdown if you're expecting any LGBT romance. The main character's best friend is a nonbinary or androgynous girl that perfers a boy's name, haircut, and clothes. The two (teens? kids?) have some adventures inside the playhouse that revolve around the old Puppet Master and newer, younger replacement. It's an unusual story and a unique world, but was untimately not that interesting to me. ( )

This a fresh view on Russian culture and the general attitudes held toward gay people. This is the first YA novel to be translated into English from Russia, and truly displays the pain and hope a young, downtrodden person may feel as they learn to accept who they are in the face of great intolerance and adversity.

I featured this novel along with Stonewall, Boy Meets Boy, and Annie on my mind in my high school's library during turmoil in adjusting our school's policy to be more accepting of our LGBT students in order to offer intellectual support to students as well as provide and alternative perspective to the heterosexual view that is commonly found in YA novels.